14 DAY TRIAL // Over the past few years, more and more parents have voiced criticism towards the fact that their children are spending a lot of time on their computers, rather than playing outside with their friends. But a new study shows that, in fact, the computer-game industry has managed to strike gold when it comes to making kids learn new things. According to the same investigation, it might be that schools themselves, as well as teachers, could have a lot to learn from the way games approach learning. A complete overhaul of the system could see children learning better and faster, the experts say.
The research was conducted by experts at the Arizona State University (ASU), who were led by the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Chair in Literacy Studies in the Mary Lou Fulton Institute, and Graduate School of Education, James Gee. The expert says that some of the strategies the most commercially successful games use could be very easily implemented in classrooms to great results. “Commercial video games, the ones that make a lot of money, are nothing but problem-solving spaces,” he explained on February 19 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held in San Diego. His symposium was called “First-Person Solvers? Learning Mathematics in a Video Game.”
A few years ago, Gee was among the first scientists to really look into the educational potential that video games had. He explains that one of the main advantages that games have is that they provide information to the player only when it is needed, and not all at once, at the beginning. “We tend to teach science, for example, by telling you a lot of stuff and then letting you do science. Games teach the other way. They have you do stuff, and then as you need to know information, they tell it to you,” the scientist said. Gee was also the author of the 2004 book “What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy,” PhysOrg reported.
“Think about it. If I have to make the game, or a part of the game, I come to a deep understanding of the game as a rule system. If I had to mod science – that is, I had to make some of my own curriculum or my own experiments – then I'd have an understanding at a deep level of what the rules are,” Gee further explained. “This type of learning that games do I call 'situated learning,' because you're situated in an actual problem-solving space. Situated learning can be done with or without a game. Good teachers have always done it,” he concluded.